


Life Goes On

by AndreaChristoph



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Heartbreak, Hope, One Shot, Post-Finale Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-16
Updated: 2019-05-16
Packaged: 2020-03-06 03:30:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18842728
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndreaChristoph/pseuds/AndreaChristoph
Summary: His presence fades slowly, and life goes on as it always has.But the evenings draw her back.  Lux is quiet, the doors closed to the public in the absence of the proprietor, and what was once a haven of sinful desire run wild is now a silent tomb that holds only memories - some painful, some wonderful, none of which she wants to lose when it’s all she has left of him.(A Chloe-centric introspective look into her life after Lucifer departs for Hell.)





	Life Goes On

**Author's Note:**

> I saw the S4 finale last night and this little piece demanded to be written.
> 
> (This is my first foray into writing for Lucifer and I'm still working on getting their voices right. Go easy on me!)

His presence fades slowly, and life goes on as it always has.

But the evenings draw her back.  Lux is quiet, the doors closed to the public in the absence of the proprietor, and what was once a haven of sinful desire run wild is now a silent tomb that holds only memories - some painful, some wonderful, none of which she wants to lose when it’s all she has left of him.

The penthouse is more of the same.  The furniture is still smashed up and laying strewn about, a glass of whiskey left untouched and forgotten on the piano.  She’s been too afraid to move things. It all feels tenuous; so long as nothing changes, she still has evidence he was ever there.  She has hope he’ll come back.

On the nights where she doesn’t have Trixie, she finds herself staying there.  At first resting on the couch, taking comfort in the ghost of his presence, but eventually she crawls under the covers of his bed, still laying unmade from the last time he’d awoken there.  The pillow and sheets still smell of him, the sharp scent of his aftershave lingering long after he’s gone. She hugs one of the pillows as she lays there, eyes shut tight as she tries to hang on to what’s left of him.

The longer time stretches on, the more he fades and the worse her heart breaks.

Dan can tell.  He never addresses it directly, but knows something has happened, just not what.  He often offers a listening ear or a hug if she needs it. It feels woefully inadequate for the pain she feels in her chest throughout the day.  The pain that lingers and throbs while she throws herself into her work, attempting to distract herself, but without her partner there at her side, it’s just another painful reminder of his absence.

“Where is Lucifer?”  Trixie is heartbroken for entirely different reasons.  She’d had a close friendship with him (however one-sided it was...though he’d always had a warm glint in his eye as he protested Trixie’s hands-on shows of affection).  She feels abandoned, feels rejected, feels everything that Chloe does but without any of the context, any of the understanding of his reasons for leaving. He’d left without a goodbye, and it left a hole in both of their lives.

“He had to go home.”  She sits on her daughter’s bed and holds Trixie as she cries.  “He _had_ to leave, sweetheart, he didn’t want to.”

“But why?”

Why?  That was the question, wasn’t it?

She knows why.  She knows it was for her.  For all of them, really, a modern-day crucifixion allegory come to life.   _I give my life for yours_.  He’d sacrificed his happiness, his humanity, to keep them all safe.

(To keep _her_ safe.)

She thinks about him, down _there_ , as she lays in his bed and stares at the wall.  He’d never told her much about it, and so she has no idea what things are like for him.  Is it the lap of luxury, a king in his castle ruling over his demonic subjects and their victims?  Was it all fire and brimstone, pain and misery echoing off every wall and he in the middle of all of it?  Was it just sheer _nothingness_ , a purgatory designed to drive one insane for all eternity, and Lucifer along with it?

She has no way of knowing.  Part of her, the selfish part, hopes it’s miserable for him if only to draw him back to the surface, back to _her_.  But the part of her that loves him hopes he’s at peace, however that might look.  

Sometimes she dreams about him.  In dreams, he is the angel who held her close and kept her safe as gunfire shredded his wings, the angel who kissed her, the angel who loved her.  And in nightmares he is himself at his worst - his hellish form, towering over hordes of demons, bellowing, pure rage, demanding respect, demanding obedience.

No, no.  She knows that isn’t true.  It should be nightmares, but that fear passed long ago.  His ‘true’ form (however true it could be, as it was no doubt just a manifestation of his own guilt and self-loathing) had ceased to frighten her.  The heart that beat inside that chest remained unchanged, however hellish the external form became.

No, her true nightmares are of Lucifer, alone down there, withering away in his misery, living for all eternity as the universal scapegoat of all wrongdoing and suffering.  She would age, and she would one day die, but he would live on forever, completely alone in a place of misery.

He’d lived a life on her plane of existence that was constantly filled with others.  Wild parties in the penthouse, the club busy every night and Lucifer at the center of it all, and the rest of his days spent curled up watching terrible children's movies with her and Trixie (complete with inappropriately adult running commentary no matter how many elbows she gave him), or laying on the floor for board games and candy, or showing up unannounced with takeout for dinner and a selection of the best chocolate cakes that Los Angeles had to offer (determined as he was for Trixie to eat only the finest desserts available).  But at the end of the day, he was almost never alone. He tried not to be. She knew why - alone left him with only his thoughts for company. With others around, the cacophony of noise in his head was drowned out.

And perhaps that’s why he had come to the surface in the first place.  To escape the voices in his head and his lonely existence. Instead, he found clarity, he started a path to forgiving himself, and he’d found her.

(But in a lot of ways, maybe she’d found him.)

She had never needed him.  Chloe Decker had existed before Lucifer stepped into her life, and she would continue to exist after he’d left it.  But there was a hole left behind, a gaping wound that she couldn’t seem to heal, and she may not have needed him to be herself or to live her life, but her heart, her shattered and broken heart - _that_ needed him.  She could barely stand the aching in her chest when she thought about his smile, or his eyes when he looked at her in that way that was reserved just for her, or how warm his hand had felt against her cheek moments before he left her.  The pain is fresh every day, the melancholy casting a shadow over her entire life, and carries on for months on end.

Until one day, she lays her head on his pillow, and realizes the scent of him is gone.

It hits her all at once, her grief pouring out of her in a tidal wave that she can’t stop, and a keening wail breaks free as she clutches the pillow to her chest, curls around it like a wounded animal.  She cries out in pain, yells at the top of her lungs, going back and forth between rage and longing and despair. Rage at the circumstances keeping them apart. Longing for him to come strolling out of that elevator with his usual smile and for him to say her name in that way that was so utterly Lucifer.  Despair that he never will.

In her anger, she smashes things.  She throws the untouched glass of whiskey against the stone wall, glass shards and alcohol flying everywhere that she simply stares at.  It matches the state his home has been in for months, not remotely out of place amongst the rest of the disarray.

It matches the storm raging inside her.

After that, she finally starts to clean up after the carnage.  It brings her a small bit of peace to do so. She can’t hold back the tears as she does it, and so doesn’t try, simply lets them come as she slowly restores the penthouse to its former glory.  Eventually she asks Dan for help, having tried and failed to repair some of the smashed bookshelves and furniture, and he says yes without hesitation. Even once those are fixed, he continues to join her, fixing and tidying things a short distance away, never forcing conversation on her, just being there if she needs it.  She’s never been more grateful to have her ex-husband as one of her closest friends. He understands the loss, the grief, all too well. He doesn’t know why Lucifer is gone, where he’s gone, none of it, but he recognizes the pain in her, mirroring his own grief over losing Charlotte.

Eventually she moves into the penthouse - it’s fully paid up, after all, and with Maze no longer living with her and Trixie in the apartment, costs had become unreasonably high.  Dan had offered to help out, but that would be a short term solution at best, and she had no desire to track down another roommate.

And so one cold day in February, she and Trixie haul their things up the elevator and settle in.

Slowly but surely it starts to feel more like home.  She hides away any of Lucifer’s more _adult_ possessions, but leaves the rest as-is, her way of keeping him alive.  She reads the numerous books he has, wondering to herself if he’d read them as well and what he might have thought.  She places her clothes into drawers next to his, always pausing to run a hand over his impeccably folded shirts before she pushes the drawer closed.  She finds his stash of ascots and ends up wearing them herself, feels her partner’s presence at her side even in his absence.

Time heals all wounds.  

(Except it doesn’t.)

A new life takes the place of her old one, as she throws herself into connecting with those she loves. Her relationship with Dan grows deeper, their friendship stronger and more impactful than any attempt at connection they’d made during their short, ill-fated marriage.  She spends more time with her ‘tribe’, having Linda and Maze and Ella over for wine, and only sometimes does it turn to reminiscing about the devil on all their shoulders, gone but not forgotten. Trixie is the happiest she’s been in ages, with her parents getting along so well and with Chloe so focused on connecting with her any chance she gets.

But each night, once Trixie is asleep and Chloe has once more crawled into her bed - Lucifer’s bed - she finds herself talking to him in hushed tones.  Telling him about her days. Recounting memories of their time together. Sometimes crying, whispering how much she misses him, but telling him she’s okay, or at least she will be, eventually.  Hoping he’s okay down there, or as okay as he can be. She never expects an answer, and that’s okay; it’s enough to know that somehow, some way, he might hear her.

Her patron saint.  Her guardian angel.

She’d never been particularly religious.  And still she casts her prayers out into the void, hoping they’ll reach him.  Hoping one day he’ll return to her, and that on that day, he’ll see that Chloe Decker refused to give up, not just on life, but on _him_.  

And until that day came, she’d continue putting one foot in front of the other.

And life would go on as it always has.


End file.
